Grief. Going. Healing.

I think one of my favorite things about writing a blog is the ability I have to go back and see all of the thoughts I’ve had over the last 11 months. It’s also one of my least favorite things about having a blog. Sometimes my posts sound like a broken record… Sometimes I feel like my therapist thinks I’m a broken record. Sometimes I feel like I am a broken record…   Like, bruh, I’ve already written or talked about this before, why am I writing and talking about it again?! But hey, healing’s not linear, right? So, if you’ve followed along with my blog and have found yourself thinking the same thing, you aren’t alone.  

My last post, you can find it here, was about depression and my struggle with it. Some days it’s smooth sailing and I can function like a normal person. Some days, it feels like my life is a dumpster fire and if I get out of bed and eat something, I call it a success.  In these days filled with heavy depression, I find myself attempting to isolate myself. Does it make me feel better? Absolutely not. Does it help with my depression? Nope. But in some space in my head, I’ve convinced myself that isolation is the way to go.

In this recent episode of depression, I’ve found myself thinking about walls and masks a lot. When I think about a wall, the first image that comes to mind is the Great Wall of China. I am a product of the Disney movies that came out in the 90s. So naturally when I think of the Great Wall of China, I think of the movie Mulan. (Mulan is the ultimate Disney princess and you can’t tell me otherwise.) The specific image that comes to mind is the beginning of the movie when the Great Wall is attacked by the Huns. If you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The watchmen on the wall are trying to warn all of China that the Huns have arrived by light fires all on the top of the wall. The leader of the Huns, who’s name slips my mind, swooped in out of nowhere with his creepy bird and was ready for war and ready to take on all of China. You know the scene, right?! The purpose of the Great Wall of China, like most walls, was to give some layer of protection from outsiders coming in where they aren’t necessarily wanted. The second image that comes to mind when I think about a wall is an interior wall used in a house. In my mind, I see a room in the middle of the house, with no exterior walls. The more walls between that room and the outside the better. That’s the image that comes to mind.  A little extreme, I know, but that’s the image that comes to mind.

I think I’ve always known this to some capacity, but I am a great wall builder. Dare I say it, I’m an expert wall builder. I’m not talking about a physical wall like one in a house or one separating borders of countries, I’m talking about a relational wall that keeps people out. Maybe even an emotional wall to keep my emotions from spilling outside of me for the whole world to see. I don’t know if I’ve always done it, or if it’s always been intentional, but I can build a wall that keeps people at a safe distance. I’m not sure why, but for whatever reason, my wall building expertise seems to show itself the most right before, right after, and during a depressive episode. It’s almost like my mind, or the enemy (talking about Satan), has me convinced that when life is hard, I’m a burden. I’m a nuisance to those who care about me. These walls I’ve built are, in a sense, my way of trying to keep myself from being that burden or nuisance or whatever it is I’m convinced I’m being. If my walls keep people out, I’ll never have the opportunity to annoy them.

 Going back to the image I have of interior walls; I feel like that’s what I try to do. I put as many walls between me and people as possible. The exterior walls are a little easier to knock down. But the closer you get, whether it be by just showing up or asking questions, the more secure those walls get… the harder they get to come tumbling down. I’ve not built these walls with some puny Lego bricks; these walls are STURDY. I’m talking about how it can withstand an F5 tornado strong. Some people get lucky and knock some of the bricks loose and can enter the little safe room I’ve created for myself, but as soon as I can, I try to start repairing my broken wall instead of letting more people in.

The purpose of most masks is to conceal one’s identity. Maybe that is by means of something like a ski mask or something more like a mask you’d see at Halloween or some kind of costume party. Regardless of the type of mask, they do the same thing. When I was little, I liked to run around the house with a ski mask thinking it would disguise my identity from my family or whoever was there, and no one would know it was me. A ridiculous notion I know, but to little kid me, it made perfect sense. In some capacity, I still do that. I try to mask not necessarily who I am from people, but the struggles I’m going through and how I’m truly doing.

Similarly to my wall building activities, I like to mask my emotions and thoughts. I don’t necessarily like to show the real me… not always anyways.  If I express how I’m really feeling… people will surely see me as some negative person in their life… someone who is a burden? A Nuisance? An overly sensitive person who takes things too personally? The list of these types of thoughts goes on in my head. If I think I am, I am, right? I’m sure I’m not the only person on the face of the planet guilty of masking what’s going on and building walls to keep people out. Maybe I am, but I’d like to think I’m not the only person who struggles with this.

The question I then must answer becomes why? Why do I use a mask and build walls? Why do we do this? I believe wholeheartedly what scripture says- we were made for community. We weren’t meant to do life alone. Building walls and wearing masks makes living in community kind of hard, right? If I don’t let people in, if I don’t let them see and hear and know what I’m going through, how can I ever expect to make it in this world?

As I’ve been thinking about masks and walls and the growth I need to do in this area, the Lord keeps bringing Luke 5:17-25. I usually don’t include the verses, I just give you a hyperlink to click on and go read them, but I feel like this is important when talking about masks and walls. Note: you can also read a different account of the same event in Mark 2.

Luke 5:17-25

¹⁷ On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal.^[d] 18 And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, ¹⁹ but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. ²⁰ And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” ²¹ And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” ²² When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts? ²³ Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? ²⁴ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” ²⁵ And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. ²⁶ And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”

Growing up, I heard the story and others of Jesus healing the paralytic many times. I always just zoned in on the fact that Jesus healed people with all these crazy ailments. The end. There’s obviously more to these stories, but as a child, that’s what I took away from them. Jesus healed people, color my picture of Jesus healing whoever, eat my snack, and them tell my parents what I learned. As an adult, different aspects of the story have started to stand out to me.

Here, Jesus is in a house. He’s teaching. There is this group of friends who have a friend who is paralyzed. They’ve heard about Jesus. They know and believe that Jesus can heal their friend. So, they bring their friend to Jesus, but they can’t get to Him. There is no way anyone is getting into that house through the door. It’s packed out. The friends didn’t let this minor inconvenience stop them. They climbed onto the roof of the house, somehow, knocked a hole into the roof and lowered their friend into the house so that he could be healed by Jesus. Jesus acknowledged the faith of the friends, told the paralytic his sins had been forgiven, words were exchanged with the Pharisees and then Jesus eventually told the man he was healed. The man got up, got his mat or whatever he was lying on, and went home praising God.

It’s only been this year that I truly noticed the part in verse 20 that says Jesus acknowledged their faith- their is referring to the friends who brought their friend to Him, and then took out part of the roof to make sure he could see Jesus. The friends we have… the community we surround ourselves with matters.

So why do I do, why do we do, this whole wall building and mask wearing thing? Why do we insist on trying to keep people out? We need community. We need people in our lives. We don’t need any Tom, Dick, or Harry, though. We need HEALTHY people in our lives. I’m talking about those people who love Jesus, who are in the word, who love us unconditionally despite our flaws, and point us to the author and perfector of our faith. How do we take down these walls and dispose of our masks? It must start with doing away with our pride and admitting we need help and need community. It means we must be that silly v word- vulnerable and let people into the hard places. Similarly to how Rome wasn’t built in a day, our walls and our masks won’t come down in one day, but we have to start knocking those walls down and lowering our masks so that we can have those type of friends who will drag us somewhere and knock in a roof so we can be healed by Jesus.

What does that look like? Maybe it means we send a text to someone asking for prayer with a summary of what’s going on. Maybe it means we ask a friend to meet us for coffee, or something else if you’re like me and think coffee is gross, and talk about the hard things in life. Maybe it means finding an older male or female in your church to disciple you. Maybe it means starting therapy or seeking wise counsel to get to the root of why you like walls and masks so much. Maybe, for me anyways, when someone who is a healthy and trustworthy person asks how you are, you give an honest answer instead of the basic “I’m okay”.

Whatever it looks like, we need to figure it out. We MUST figure it out. So all of us who like masks and walls, let’s do the hard work and let people into the spaces we have so desperately tried to keep them out of. Let’s find our community and our group of healthy people to run this race called life with.